The Light Ages by Ian R. Macleod

Author:Ian R. Macleod
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Alternative Histories (Fiction), London (England), Fantasy, SteamPunk, Science Fiction, Historical
ISBN: 9780441011490
Publisher: Ace Trade
Published: 2003-01-01T13:00:00+00:00

IV

'Morning, citizen!'

It was the Oneshiftday after my return from Saltfleetby when I first heard this greeting — unforced, unironic, not said in the emphatic tones which members of the People's Alliance used it — called out workman to workman across the street. I walked on, my bag and my worries lightened, whistling a tune I couldn't place, towards Black Lucy and Blissenhawk and all the empty columns of this shift's New Dawn.

Perhaps this really would be the summer when the Third Age of Industry would end. No one quite knew how such changes came about, for the turnings were spaced at least a century apart, and the histories were vague. As a child, I'd imagined that greatguildsmen would look out of the windows, sniff the morning air, and decide that England needed a fresh coat of paint . . . I knew that the First Age of Industry had started with the execution of the last king, the second with some massive and complex re-organisation of the guilds, and that the start of the third had been signalled by the triumphant exhibition at World's End. But how?

Why? Even in the pages of the Guild Times, let alone those of the New Dawn, there was no consensus.

'Morning, citizen!'

The buildings quivered. The Thames shrank and exhaled. It was a summer of visions and portents. A real hermit took up residence on Hermit's Hill and started proclaiming the end, not just of the Age, but of time itself. Church attendances went up and the dark seemed denser when you passed the tall open doorways, scented with a new variety of hymnal wine. A tree in the courtyard of one of the great guildhalls which hadn't budded for five centuries fulfilled some old prophecy and came into leaf Almost all the citizens of the Easterlies seemed to have signed a huge petition calling for change known as the Twelve Demands. Dry thunder rattled over the Kite Hills. The evenings smelled close and foetid and muddy, and the gaslights simply added to the yellow swell of heat. The days were so hot now that people took to sleeping through them and coming out at night, and many of the shops remained open, and everyone was spending. Prices had increased so much recently that, in an odd kind of way, the value of money suddenly seemed less important. The masthead of the latest edition of the New Dawn said 4

Pence, or Something Useful in Exchange, and Saul and I often returned home with shrivelled marrows and bent cigarettes.

'So . . .' Saul lit a cheroot and waved away the match as we sat outside one evening in a bar which had tumbled into Doxy Street. 'When are you going to tell us all about that shiftend of yours down by the seaside?'

'There really isn't much to tell. The people are much like the ones you see here, only with more money and worse accents. They're ...' I thought about Walcote House — the soft carpets and high ceilings and dissolving walls.

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